Microsoft Wants More Programming Languages for Windows 8

April 4, 2012

By Developer.com Staff

During a session at the Lang.Next conference, Microsoft's Martyn Lovell made a pitch for programming language developers to support the Windows 8 runtime (WinRT). Microsoft "wants developers to create languages for the new (WinRT) developer platform," he said. Currently, Windows 8 supports C++, JavaScript/HTML5, Visual Basic, Visual C# and XAML.

Microsoft has been encouraging developers to write Metro apps in HTML5/JavaScript and C++; however, developers have been expressing much more interest in managed languages and .Net. An analysis of questions on the Windows 8 MSDN developer forum finds that developers asked 3,129 questions about HTML5, 2448 questions about CPP and a whopping 8,436 questions about .Net development.